Academic performance in teaching programming: considerations from a gender perspective

Abstract

From studies carried out in Cienfuegos, there has been weakness in the gender perspective in the sciences related to Information and Communication Technologies, in addition the incorporation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics careers is insufficient. Therefore, a project has been designed that has as one of its tasks to identify, from the gender perspective, elements that characterize the academic reality of the teaching of programming at the University of Cienfuegos "Carlos Rafael Rodríguez". The communication reports the results of the quantitative-descriptive research carried out that aimed to describe the academic performance in the subjects related to programming, from a gender perspective, in those enrolled in the 2016-2017 academic year and that culminated in 2022 in the Computer Engineering career, from the answer to the questions: In the first five subjects related to programming, do the results of men show any difference compared to that of women? And what is the result of the analysis of the graduation of women with respect to men at the end of the fifth year of the career? The analysis of documents was used as a fundamental method, as well as statistical descriptors such as percentage and medians. The Mann-Whitney U test revealed that women have a lower academic performance than male students, however, the percentage of graduation of women was higher than men.